New Club Starter Kit

Starting a gymnastics club can be daunting, and figuring out how to financially sustain your club’s operations is no exception. In this section of the New Club Starter Kit, we describe different ways that NAIGC member clubs can generate funds to help them offer gymnastics opportunities in their community. In this section, you’ll find information about: 

• Budgeting
• [Collegiate Clubs Only] How to explore funding options through your university or college’s student activities union; 
• Effective fundraising methods;
• And other funding options to explore

Budgeting

Building a budget from scratch can be a challenging endeavor, so start by downloading our Budget Building Tool. A lot of items may be guesses to start, but it’s good practice to build a budget each year and keep track of how well you stick to that budget.

[Collegiate Clubs] Funding through your School

Some colleges offer funding for student athletic groups and clubs through their student activities department. Student groups can sometimes submit grant requests to receive funding from these departments, which may require an application or presentation component. Each school runs a little bit differently, so it is important that you reach out to your student activities department or any other department at your school that handles the funding of student groups to identify your club’s eligibility for school funding. Important things to keep in mind include how much money your club may be eligible for; the timeline for submitting applications and receiving funds; and whether there are any special protocols that accompany receiving funding from your school, such as documentation procedures or limitations on what you can use funds for. Also make sure to ask if there are other student group grants that you can apply for.

Please note that not all schools will provide funding for club sports. Please check with your respective department to see if your club will qualify for funding. If not, determine other ways to fund the club such as fundraising, club dues (members will pay a set amount per year to be part of the club) and possibly sponsorships if your school allows this. 

Fundraising

Fundraising may seem like a no-brainer, but finding lucrative opportunities that are worth your time and effort can be challenging! We’re here to break down the ways that NAIGC clubs use their gymnastics to bring in the big bucks. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started: 

• “Flips for Tips”: Potentially one of the most lucrative fundraising options employed by NAIGC clubs, “Flips for Tips” is an event where members organize to perform gymnastics in a public space or during events for cash donations. Some clubs have had success with performing this fundraising event at the tailgating lots during their school’s popular home athletic events, such as football or basketball. The idea is that your club creates an entertaining show, such as by performing flips, stunts, or coordinated gymnastics, and that your entertained patrons reward you with cash donations. Some schools require you to have a fundraising permit before performing fundraising events at school-sponsored events, so make sure to talk to someone in your school’s student activities department beforehand to be aware of any rules.
• Car wash: Throw a car wash and use the proceeds for the club
• Concessions: Work the concession stand at other school sporting events, such as soccer, football, basketball, or hockey games 
• Restaurant Fundraisers: Collaborate with local restaurants for a fundraiser, where a portion of their profits benefit your club. For more information regarding restaurant chains who participate in these types of fundraisers, click here
• Charge membership fees or “dues”: This is perhaps the simplest way to generate revenue for your club. Those who come to your club’s practices or use the services that the club provide would pay a set amount for a certain time period. You may choose to charge membership fees on a monthly, semesterly, or annual basis. How much you choose to charge depends on how many services your club will offer members. If you offer more services, such as coaching or paying for competitive fees, then you may charge more for your membership fees than if you were just providing your members with a space to practice. 
• Set up a support or donation page: There are many different online services that allow you to collect donations for your student organization, such as Facebook, Supportful, GoFundMe, or Fundly. The NAIGC doesn’t have a service that we specifically recommend, but it’s important that you research your options. Some things to think about when choosing a crowdfunding service is what percentage of donations your organization keeps and whether there are any monthly or annual fees to use the service. Please check if this is allowed at your school!
• Have local businesses sponsor your club: In return, businesses could receive free advertising (for example, on the back of a club t-shirt or at club-sponsored events) or other perks. 
• Bake sales: great margins, people love baked goods, relatively easy, just need to find a time/place that makes sense to set up, and get your team to bake yummy stuff
• Run a beginner class: Outside of competition season (so ~May-Oct), have a couple of your more experienced members teach a beginner class and charge a small fee for people to take the class (we do $5/class, drop-in so there’s no commitment). This also acts as a great feeder/recruitment method for the team, as it gives people a low-commitment way to “try it out”
• Hosting a meet: Be careful this can lose money, depends on how much you charge to participate, admission, concessions, etc), but can also be a big revenue source if you do it right
• [Collegiate Clubs Only] Alumni database and ask for tax deductible donations: This is a longer term strategy, but you should be tracking everyone who graduates from the team and getting their permanent (non-school) email addresses added to an alumni email list. Send out newsletters regarding what’s going on with the team (example here), maybe annually to start, as frequent as every quarter, and start asking for donations (tax deductible hopefully!).

Research opportunities specific to your region or school. There are tons of great funding guides generated by all sorts of different clubs or student organizations (not necessarily gymnastics clubs), such as this one linked here. Take some time to dig into these ideas and see how they apply to your own club!

If these fundraising events don’t fit the needs of your organization, have no fear! There are tons of different creative ways to raise money for your organization. You can click here or search Google for other ideas. It’s also a good idea to talk with other student groups or athletic clubs at your school to understand what other opportunities are available at your school.

Other Funding Options

How your club delegates fundraising responsibilities is completely up to you. NAIGC clubs have employed a variety of methods to tailor their financial needs to their membership. For example, some clubs:

• Require their members to participate in a certain number of fundraising events per academic period (i.e. trimester, semester, etc.);
• Require those members who compete to participate in more fundraising events than members who do not compete;
• Offer incentives to members who participate in extra fundraising, such as by offering free dues for a week or month;
• And/or penalize members who don’t participate in fundraising with a fee. 

Regular Season Meets

You can learn more about our regular season competitions on our Upcoming Meets page. Meets that are sanctioned by the NAIGC ensure equipment standards are met, certified judges are used, and provide NAIGC awards. Generally, each region hosts a regional competition around February or March of each year. Regionals can be attended by any NAIGC members and are not required to participate in Nationals. We recommend reaching out to your regional leaders to learn more about competitions in your area.

Nationals

Check out our About Nationals and Nationals Tips page to learn more about NAIGC Nationals, which are generally hosted in early April each year.

NAIGC Nationals is the only gymnastics competition hosted by the NAIGC, and one of the few adult-specific national gymnastics competitions in the world. Each year, the meet is hosted in a different region of the United States, and over 1,600 gymnasts from nearly 150 different teams across the United States (and Belgium!) attend the competition. Nationals is a 3-day competition held in early April, with preliminary qualifications held over two days and a final competition held on Saturday. After the final competition, the NAIGC hosts an awards banquet, where the top gymnasts and teams in each division and level are awarded with the coveted National Champion title. After the awards banquet, the NAIGC hosts a large social gathering with music and dancing for all attending teams. To get a feel for the competition, check out this video from a recent Nationals competition. Any Nationals-specific questions can be directed to events@naigc.org.

The NAIGC has developed many different resources to help answer your questions and keep you up-to-date on the latest information, rules, and happenings in the NAIGC. In this section of the New Club Starter Kit, we’ll describe how you can leverage resources created by the NAIGC specifically to help clubs better understand the organization and what the NAIGC offers. 

NAIGC Resources

Below is a list of resources created by the NAIGC to help member clubs learn about the NAIGC and its offerings and stay up-to-date on changes to our rules and policies: 

The NAIGC Website

The NAIGC Website contains a wealth of information, including our mission, governance structure and bylaws; MAG, WAG, Unified Gymnastics, and T&T rules; the NAIGC meet schedule; and so much more. Take some time to explore the website, accessible at www.naigc.org. 

Skills Resources

The NAIGC has created numerous skills and competition resources for WAG athletes, MAG athletes, Unified athletes (athletes who any combination of the MAG and/or WAG apparatuses), and Trampoline and Tumbling athletes. You can click the link for each group to access the rules guide and supplementary resources for each discipline. The NAIGC has also curated and created a collection of videos on the NAIGC YouTube page designed to help athletes build their own gymnastic routines and become better acquainted with NAIGC rules.

Communicating with the NAIGC

The first thing that any new club should do is sign up for the NAIGC Announcements listserv. You can sign up for the Announcements listserv by clicking this link. The Announcements listserv is how the NAIGC primarily communicates events, deadlines, and other pertinent news to NAIGC member clubs. 

There are several ways that you can get in touch with the NAIGC if you have a question. Here’s a list of who you should contact: 

• First point of contact – your Regional Leaders! For any questions you have, start by contacting your Regional Leaders (find out who your Regional Leaders are by clicking this link and navigating to the Regional Leaders tab).
• Other options Contact info@naigc.org for all of your general questions or email events@naigc.org for event or Nationals-specific questions.